


Connecting the Dots

by elumish



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Engagement, F/M, Pre-Relationship, relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:53:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all, you only needed two points to make a line and she was good at connecting the dots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Connecting the Dots

Sam got engaged to Jonas Hanson because she thought he would understand. Military man, more charming than her father but still close enough that it all made sense. And then he turned out to be too much like her father in some ways and not enough in other ways, and after the second bruise, she left him. Because one bruise was an accident; two was a pattern. After all, you only needed two points to make a line and she was good at connecting the dots.

She was determined to do better a second time. And that better came in the form of Pete Shanahan. He was funny, attractive enough but not so attractive that he thought he was God’s gift to womankind, a cop which meant he knew what it was like that someday you might not come back but not a serviceman or an officer which meant that he wouldn’t expect her to follow his orders. He was also very much not Jack O’Neill.

She knew that wasn’t necessarily the best criteria for a potential life partner—not the man you were in love with—but it was working out for her so far. Because when she looked at him, she didn’t see Jack O’Neill. When she talked to him, she didn’t hear Jack O’Neill. And when she laid in bed next to him, she didn’t feel Jack O’Neill.  And that meant that sometimes, for a few minutes at a time, she could get a reprieve from the fact that she was devastatingly in love with Jack O’Neill and could never do anything about it without ruining her career.

So she said yes to Pete because he had been read into the Stargate Program, because he had moved to be closer to her, because he didn’t notice when she didn’t sleep or forgot to eat or spent the mornings pacing her house because her alternative was doing something she didn’t want to do. She said yes to him because he was in love with an image, and she was very good at being that image, had been doing it for most of her life. As long as you didn’t look too closely, and he didn’t.

She did love Pete. She wouldn’t have agreed to marry him if she didn’t. The problem was that she loved someone else more, or loved him less, and some days she thought she would be better off just being alone because then there would be nobody to ask about the scars she didn’t want to have to explain or the fact that sometimes seeing twins scared her more than she was willing to admit.

Being with nobody meant hurting nobody, in those times when she forgot to talk because she was too busy trying to think of how to build her next project or stop her next enemy, or those times when she stayed on base for four days straight until Daniel or Jack or Teal’c reminded her that sunlight was healthy and so was fresh air.

Sometimes it felt like she was watching her life pass by from the outside, like it was a movie playing just in front of her eyes, and she was just looking at it, and every once in a while she reached out and touched someone, felt something. Sometimes she forgot she was having sex in the middle of having it, Pete’s hands closed around her hips or curled in her fingers as she looked at him and wondered what the hell she was doing there.

One her bad days, though they might be her good days, she couldn’t tell anymore, pain was the only thing that felt real. She didn’t injure herself intentionally, because then she would be a liability to her team, and if there was one thing she couldn’t bear doing, it was risking them, but feeling it, sprains, cuts, bruises, it was what grounded her, so she didn’t feel like she was untethered from the ground, about to float away.

The worst was when she opened her mouth and out came words that she didn’t mean, words that she knew were going to hurt the person she was saying them to. And sometimes she did it on purpose, because hurting him hurt her, and maybe she deserved that punishment.

Because she was choosing the wrong people, she was always choosing the wrong people, and she was _Samantha Carter_ , she was the one who had blown up a sun, she was the one who had made the Stargate work; she should know better. But apparently she didn’t, because she made the same mistakes over and over.

Because he turned out to be too much like her father in some ways and not enough in other ways, and she pretended that one invasion of her privacy was an accident, because it took two to be a pattern, and she was trying to pretend there wouldn’t be another point because she was too good at connecting the dots.

The worst was when she was happy, and she knew that they were bad choices but her body, her traitorous body, forgot that fact. And that was why she stayed. Because behind the revulsion and the guilt and the self-hatred, sometimes they made her happy.

It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion, except she was in the train, she _was_ the train, and there wasn’t anything she could do to stop.


End file.
